Elvis cupcakes - banana, peanut butter and bacon

When this month's Alphabakes letter was announced as E, I knew I wanted to do something a bit more imaginative as I've been busy lately and my entries have been pretty standard, like double chocolate muffins for D. I was flicking through my recipe books and I found it... the perfect E.... Elvis cupcakes! Apparently the King of Rock and Roll's favourite sandwich filling was banana, peanut butter and bacon - which sounds pretty disgusting to me - but those flavours would work much better in a cupcake!

I got the idea from my Outsider Tart book Baked In America, though they don't actually give a recipe -they have a recipe for banana nut whoopie pies and mention that they serve them as an Elvis version without the nuts and a peanut butter frosting and crispy bacon on top. I decided that caramelized bacon sounded better and that I wanted to make cupcakes instead of whoopie pies, so I adapted the recipe a bit. The recipe for the caramelized bacon is taken from a new recipe book I was sent to review called Breakfast for Dinner.

For about 9 or 10 cupcakes, you need:
150g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
pinch of salt
65g softened butter
60g caster sugar
1 egg
generous splash of milk
1 tsp vanilla flavouring
1 banana

For the frosting:
quantities are approximate:
100g soft cheese
75g peanut butter
enough icing sugar to mix to a stiff paste

For the topping:
2 rashers bacon
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp cocoa powder

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl (flour, bicarb of soda, salt, sugar) and cream with the butter

Mix in the egg

It's probably best to mash the banana and add it, but mine was too firm so I sliced it very finely then mixed again with my hand mixer, which broke the pieces up.

Add a generous splash of milk to make the mixture a bit wetter

Spoon into cake cases. I used gold cases as I thought that was appropriate for the King!

Bake for about 15-20 minutes

To make the frosting, beat the soft cheese and icing sugar

Add the peanut butter and beat in

This tastes delicious!

Pipe onto the top of your cupcakes

Now for the unusual part.... Breakfast for Dinner is a great book full of ideas for breakfast that are far more interesting than just cereal or toast. In fact, some of them are whole meals in themselves that you could have for dinner, or brunch. I'll be reviewing the book in more detail later (and cooking something from it), but for the moment I'll tell you about their caramelized bacon recipe. It's part of their recipe for maple syrup cupcakes and is very easy to make.

Mix the brown sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl

Dip in a rasher of bacon so it is coated on both sides, then put on a grill pan - you oven cook these rather than grill but they need to be on a rack where the fat can drip through.

Lovely and crisp and caramelized!

Finally, I crumbled the bacon and sprinkled it over the cupcakes. Don't these look fit for a King?

I also made some without the bacon and added Dr. Oetker gold balls which I think go very nicely with the colour of the peanut butter frosting and give an elegant touch.

Thanks to PG UK for the review copy of Breakfast for Dinner.

I am sending these to Alphabakes, hosted by Ros from TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker (it's my turn to host again next month).

I am also sending this to the How To Cook Good Food's One Ingredient Challenge, as this month's ingredient is banana. This month the challenge is hosted by Franglais Kitchen.